I’m probably gonna get a lot of downvotes for this and people will throw all the exceptions in my face right away so let’s get that out of the way; yes, accidents do happen and sometimes you can’t do anything about it. You can get into a plane crash, you can find out you have cancer , you can fall and be paralyzed from the neck down, I’m not saying homeless people should just “buy a house”.

I’m saying that for the good majority of people, when you graduate high school, you have a lot of opportunities and chances and room for error to become who you want to be and to do what you want to do. Whether it’s getting a degree, start a business, get married, buy a house, own a farm with lots of animals, buy that really cool car you wanted, you name it. You can go to college to be a doctor, quit after 5 years, and still change your mind to start a business instead, have three businesses fail, then your fourth business can take off and it’s all part of life.

What I’m noticing in people as I get older is some are just manifesting themselves into bad situations. My main point is that everything has consequences but usually not ones that will cost you in the moment. If you smoke every day, your lungs will be damaged. You’ll be fine for a long time, but it’ll catch up. If you don’t brush your teeth, you’ll get cavities, if you lift things incorrectly you’ll have back pain, but you only hear people complaining about the situation they got themselves into after they’ve been doing the exact thing that led them here for 20 years.

Again, I know what you’re thinking, a perfectly healthy and fit person can still die from a heart attack at age 30, you can do everything right and still end up homeless or you might have a perfect life until your husband/wife cheats and then you divorce and your house and your kids are gone. But I think the majority of people lead themselves into these situations and don’t realize until it’s too late.

Specifically the person that prompted me to make this post is going down this path. She’s a smart kid, well read, has great connections, has charisma, hangs around with business owners and successful people all the time, dresses elegantly. She wants to be a careerwoman kind of like the lawyers in Suits.

But that’s just it, all she really does is hang out with people. Her instagram looks fancy, and you’d believe she has a lot going for her as she posts eating at a restaurant, going to nice places and so on, but while the people around her grow steadily, expanding business, making new plans she’s stuck being a helper in a local shop with no way to move up for 4 years now. When you talk to her, she opens up and says she doesn’t like what she’s doing, and yet she hasn’t changed anything about her life. She spends her days hanging out with whoever has time for her, and talks to them about making it big. But while others make it big she’s getting left behind.

It’s pretty sad to see and it made me realize how many people blame their surroundings for something they are leading themselves into. Multiple people have pointed this out to her but she just keeps blaming her circumstances or makes up excuses. And she’s not unable to do it, she’s in a far better position than most people in life background wise, she is a middle class girl in Switzerland with loving parents who are together, no one is sick in the family that needs constant care, she lives at home, doesn’t have any pets or kids to take care of.

I feel like she will get to the point where her friends stop having time to hang out for 3 hours after work every day and she will start blaming her luck or the government or whatever else when instead of moving forward in life, she was wasting her time watching others grow.

TL;DR : I think a majority of people in life who don’t end up where they wanna be, actually get themselves into those situations without realizing. Accidents and misfortune happen of course, but I feel like that is the exception.